Friday, January 2, 2015

Ashira - Time for Retirement

I hope you all had a nice Christmas and New Year's Eve with your friends and families and did not spend these days with doing World Bosses and Atoll Bosses.

I have decided that it is time for me to take a break from the game - I do not know if I will return, maybe yes and maybe no. My decision is not really an impulsive one, and has several reasons that I want to explain:

Now that Salata quits, most of the original opponents in Class Wars are gone. And they all sold their character in some way or another. I don't blame them for it, it's just reasonable to do it. But R2's lethargy is absurd in that matter. Every second, players get reminded about the "strict" ToS and about account sharing and similar actions being prohibited, but when for instance (the original) Heisenberg had the status message that he sells the character and shouted in every BG that he sells it and R2 did nothing at all, this shows how the operators really feel about their own ToS - they just don't care. I always had the opinion that if you quit the game, your char should retire with you and I will handle it this way. I would have enjoyed Class Wars if I could have fought Salata again this time and maybe won, but I have no interest in only winning because he quit and some (inexperienced) player is playing his char, so CW became irrelevant and boring to me now.

The operators were never willing to disclose event schedules. I'm not talking about the event information that R2 posts in the official forum the day before an event starts (or even after it started). I'm talking about complete event schedules - including the events players care about, in the case of Wartune SC, gem and whip events. This was never okay and I was never happy about it, but it was possible to accept it because there was a certain pattern to events - not anymore. The events are thrown out in a chaotic fashion now and they are designed extremely poorly: As an example, giving us a Sylph Equipment Enchanting event on one day and the next day starting a Holy Cast event, what's the idea behind that? Nobody has gold at that point, nobody can benefit a lot from the event, it's just a struggle, I don't see how anybody could enjoy it.

The frequency of the event cycle has changed. It's not a secret that the game has become a lot faster. We had monthly events for a long time and it was alright. The 14-day events are awful in my opinion, mostly because the single events are often only on for one day, so it could well happen that you miss out on an entire (unlimited) event just because you are away from the game for a single day. Of course the reason they accelerated the event cycle is cash - give a new mount or clothing every 2 weeks, some people will buy event boxes every 2 weeks. That alone is awful already, but still somewhat acceptable. What isn't acceptable for me is what the operators have done in the past weeks…at one point there were 3 big spender events simultaneously. And the big spender events have changed considerably. While in the past we had monthly big spender events that went up to 500$, now we seem to have several big spender events per month that go up to 1000$ or even 1800$ in one case. And of course one day after such a huge spending event ends, the operators have the great idea to run a 1000$ recharge event. And a lot of cashing players will defend the operators here and say "A recharge event essentially is free stuff for us, you can spend the balens later". True. You know what is also true? Recharging 1000$ for such an event means you will keep playing the game for another while, cause your funds are bound in-game - and during this time there will be spending events that require much more than those 1000$ for the good rewards. So be cautious there.

In the past, it required effort and patience to get strong, even as a cashing player. Now there's no feature of the game players can't max within a month by just buying stuff from hot shop, if they are willing to spend on it.

All of the above issues make the game less fun, but could still be acceptable. There are two issues though that - combined - destroy the fun in the game for me more and more. First - as criticized by many others before - features keep being added to the game without anything being removed. Of course, it is possible to say "I only do Dragon Invasion and ToK, I don't care about World Boss, Atoll Boss, TH, Wilds, Circuits, Spire, Sylph Arena, MPD, Amethyst Mine etc". And it would be totally okay, if this was the case for everybody and each player had to select the events he/she can fit into their own schedule and skip the rest. But this is not the case: Several players on my server (and probably on each server) use bots for World Boss, Atoll Boss, Circuits, Amethyst Mine and Sylph Essence Farming and also do account sharing, so that they can do all events every day. Clearly, this is against the ToS of the game. Clearly, this is cheating. What else is clear? That R2 don't give a damn! They just let it happen, no, they even encourage botting even more by making it impossible to do daily activities and have a real life, and by things like increasing gold rewards in Atoll Boss recently. Now if a top team of cheaters bots Atoll Boss four times per day even though they aren't here in person, they gain an advantage of ~40 million gold over non-cheaters (who are probably only online for 1 Atoll Boss per day, maybe 2), but with the other bots they run, it's probably closer to an advantage of 50 million gold per day.

I'm not willing to cheat in a game, as it nullifies every achievement a player has made himself/herself, but I'm also tired of all the cheaters having a considerable advantage in reward income without the operators taking any action for the sole reason that some of the cheaters are cashers and they do not want to lose their money. Cheaters should be dealt with, cashers and non-cashers alike!

I enjoyed the game, I enjoyed spending a (for me) small amount of money on the game, I enjoyed sharing information and experience in the game with you guys over the past month, but the factors above make the game unplayable for me, that is why I take this break and why it might happen that I move on to a different game completely.

I wish you all the best and want to leave you with a thought: I hope that the ones of you who keep playing Wartune really enjoy it a lot - remember that it's only a game, don't let it dictate your lives and if you don't enjoy it much at some point, take a break as well. Also, if you are a cashing player, ask yourself this question once in a while: "If Chinese servers have Battle Ratings over 5 million BR now, how much new content will we get over the next months? And how much would I have to spend to get there and have - again - the exact same strength as all the others who also spend for it? And is it worth it?". I'm not saying you should not play the game, I'm not saying you should not cash on the game, I enjoyed spending some money on a hobby that I spent quite a lot of time on myself and don't regret it. I'm only saying you should not spend in a myopic way. Make sure you understand that to get to the top in the game, you have to spend quite a bit, and to stay at the top, you have to keep spending quite a bit. In my opinion, "I'll spend 20$ because I want wings" is a somewhat reasonable sentence (as reasonable as buying digital goods that do not even belong to you can be), but for many people it quickly becomes "I'll have to spend 500$ to get the mount, because that other guy will do it too" and that's when things become irrational and create a dangerous momentum. If you feel you have to spend for some reason, take a step back. If you feel that you should spend money just because someone else does too, take a step back. Make informed decisions and keep in mind that in order to stay at the top, you'll have to keep spending - so think about it and draw your own conclusions about what you want to do.